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Friday, September 20, 2013

Alice Tutorial: Part 3.. the Rabbit

First off, I am writing this at 10pm last night.. as I should be boarding or already on my plane heading towards Germany. For those not following along with previous posts.. I am heading to Massive Voodoo's BAM classes. Their advanced teaching classes on how to paint miniatures. Where you add the BAM at the end to really make them stand out.

I fully expect to have a headache by hour 2.. but expect a huge review when it is all over ( separate ones since I am going to both of them! ).

Anyways.. Mr Rabbit.. to start off I will apologize as this was a very quick paint job, and will get a very quick write up. Also there are very little WIP shots, but I will show what I can..

The biggest thing I tried for this was to make him metallic. So the base color was a simple covering of dark brass or Tin Bitz from GW. And I mean everything got this. I took a huge brush, thinned the paint down, and just covered him in it. No 2k priming here, just a straight back undercoat.

With this out of the way, I then started to drybrush ( I know.. horrible.. on a showcase model no less! ) lighter brass and bronze colors from Vallejo Game Color range. I know a lot of people do not like this range from Vallejo but their metallic here are top shelf in my books!

Once I had what I thought would be a good base of metallic colors laid down, then I had to think how to put color back into it. As this was one dull little rabbit! Even if he was a bit shiny ;)

So I began to experiment. Again, scary since I am entering this into the Brushbrothers forums first real contest, but I knew if I did not experiment I would not be learning. On-wards we went!

The experiment here was to bring back, again, the traditional colors of the rabbit from Alice. So white was the color of the day here. But straight white would be too stark. So I pulled out the Andrea Black set and used its Base + Highlight colors to set the tone, and then highlighted up to a white. This began to give the rabbit the life I was looking for. Still a bit dull, but at least now it had SOME color in it. Even if it was only shades of grey and white.

Though at this point my painting posse began to say things like "it is too ... mmm.. something..." or "it needs more color but nothing bright..". In the end we decided that we should throw that magical Dark Sea Blue into the shadows. It would not change or stand out too much, but it would add the green/blue/black coloring to the shadows to make them work more.

Concerning the placement of the white on him though, I really tried to stick to the larger flatter areas. Thinking that these would naturally be painted, and the more movable parts would still be their metallic coloring. Hopefully my hunch was correct, but no one has said otherwise so.. :)

Not much else to really say on this. Again it was very basic. I kept the palette of colors limited. I think he had the pop needed to be seen on the base, but is drab enough to hide in the background when looking at it as a whole. He does not steal the spotlight from Alice ( which was always the fear there! ) and so he really works out nicely in the end!

Ok, maybe he steals a bit of her thunder but not enough to tip the scales :)

And now I bid ado for this post.. and potentially for the next week as I head to Hamburg and Berlin for some painting, drinking, discussions of miniatures, drinking, and learning.. and maybe some drinking? Not sure if I will have a stable internet connection or when I will be able to post next, but do expect me to take lots of notes, and plenty of photos! And then do a big write up like I did for the Beginners workshop back in March! Basing, Painting, Final Thoughts!

Stick around and find out the advanced classes go... this time with both Roman AND Raffa leading the class.. I have goosebumps.. do you? BAM!